


Aujourd'hui à Moi, Demain à Moi, Aussi

by Virus



Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: Abuse, Blood, Torture, Vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 20:26:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1036026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Virus/pseuds/Virus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Descole has been captured by Targent Agency. Raymond is dead, and he has nothing to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aujourd'hui à Moi, Demain à Moi, Aussi

It was cold, dark, and damp. The wetness in the air clung to his skin and his suit. Sweat dripped from his face and onto the floor beneath him. He wasn't touching it, though – he was suspended by ropes, carefully knotted to avoid any and all escapes. They were too tight, and he was thankful they had given him the dignity of his clothing to prevent most of the rope burns. 

Jean Descole was not quite sure how long he had actually been in the cell. He was numb down to the core, but he still sweat. He still sweat, and he still cried, and he still murmured softly to himself occasionally; he still waited for help, still waited for his dead butler, his caretaker, who would never come and never save him. 

He remembered very vividly the execution of his caretaker; upon remembrance, he shut his eyes quickly and hard, headache flowering out from behind his eye sockets. The ropes around his neck burned and bruised it in his moment of relaxing, and he had to go right back to holding himself in a specific position lest he be strangled to death. 

The door cracked open, and he shut his eyes again at the sudden intrusion of light. Expensive shoes clacked on the wet stone before stopping in front of Descole. A deep voice bounced off the walls, mingling with the drips and drops of water. 

“Descole,” said Bronev, fake cheer forced into his voice. The door slid shut slowly, and Descole could almost see Detective Inspector Bloom closing it. “How are you doing today, Descole?” 

The mask was hot against his face. He was still in the full garb, sans the boa and cloak and hat – everything else about Jean Descole was still present. His feet stuck in the air, his head dipped down. The ropes grew tighter around him as Bronev pulled something to his left, making the masked man let out a low growl. 

Otherwise, he did not dignify the Targent Commander with a true response. He refused to even look at him until Bronev forcefully made him. 

“How are you doing today?” he said again, smiling, eyes lighting up behind the glasses. “I hope you're doing particularly, hm, terrible. You are a threat to our plans.” 

He reached up and untied one of Descole's arms slightly, enough to allow him to hold the man's hand and wrist in his. 

“You've only been down here for a few days, Jean,” Bronev commented, stroking the smooth skin, shoving the cloth of the jacket and shirt up to expose more of his arm. “You already look so pitiful.” 

Descole growled lowly again, turning his head away. He wasn't sure what was going to happen – this was the first time Bronev himself had come to visit him; it was normally just Bloom or a lackey to feed him. He spoke to no one. 

“Do you want out, Descole?” asked Bronev quite suddenly, in a low, sultry tone, a mocking one, and it made the hair on Descole's neck stand on end. “All you have to do is submit loyalty to—”

“Va … Va ta fai' fout',” interrupted the victim. His red eyes, mostly hidden beneath the disguise and safe haven of his mask, stared deeply into Bronev's own. They stayed like that for several moments. Silence, save for the dripping of sweat, blood, and piss. 

Bronev laughed. “If you insist, my dear,” he said. His hands steadied on Descole's wrist and hand. He coughed a bit and – 

Snap.

Descole shook in his bounds, broken wrist and hand hanging limp. He whimpered pathetically before collecting himself. Bronev tied the hand back up with its twin, tighter than before, drawing another sound from his prisoner. He said nothing as he exited the room, bright light flashing before leaving Descole in the dark again. 

And he waited. He waited until the other had left before tears welled up in his eyes and spilled over his cheeks, falling onto the wet ground. “Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid Bronev.” 

* * * 

 

Ropes pressed taut against his neck, against his chest and stomach, everywhere. He had partially given up staying in the one position, and instead, Descole opted to be partially restricted of airflow. He was still, and he didn't murmur to himself anymore, and he didn't sweat anymore, and he didn't wish for his dead caretaker anymore. He shivered in the bonds, feeling strung up like meat on display. He had stopped sweating, but now he was freezing, and it felt as if he were going to be frozen. 

Bronev hadn't visited him yet. Bloom hadn't even visited him. It was just the lackeys, the assistants, come to spray him down to keep him from smelling like his own piss, to force feed him some disgusting liquid gruel, to laugh and mock at him – “The great Descole! Haha, not so great now, are ya?” 

He shivered again, now out of anger. 

He hated Targent. He hated Bronev. He hated Bloom. He hated Layton. He hated Desmond. He hated everyone, and the one person he didn't hate was dead. A bitter taste was left in his mouth at that thought, teeth grinding against themselves. He was pulled from his thoughts when the door opened again, flashing the light, and shutting just as quickly as it had opened. 

“My, my, Descole,” muttered Bronev. “An underling said you tried to bite him yesterday.” That was true: Descole was sick of the laughter. “So I've come again to make sure you know that that is not right. That's wrong. A good worker of Targent would know to not do that – let's make you learn.”

Bronev untied the hand with the still broken wrist, untied his whole arm, holding it tightly by the injured location to prevent Descole from doing anything but whimper. Bronev paused, Descole felt his lower arm being placed in a vice-like instrument, and Bronev laughed. 

This particular snap of bone was louder than the wrist had been. Jean let out an actual scream this time. Bronev chuckled darkly, removing the vice and patting the fractured bone hard. 

“Have you learned your lesson?”

Descole was silent, save for the beginning of a disgusting sob. 

“No? Okay, then.” Bronev pulled roughly on the bone, placed the vice around the upper arm. It took two tries to get the humerus to fully break, and by the time it split in half, Descole violently shrieked, tears and spit and snot and blood from biting his lip too hard all mixing with one another as they fell to the ground below him. His sobs were disastrous, shaking his bindings and himself. Bronev let the arm stay limp and untied, and he placed the vice directly below Descole as a reminder. He left. 

Jean wailed when the door was closed. He wanted to go home. He wanted to go home. He wanted to wake up in bed with Raymond at his side; he wanted to be in the workshop, working on his next greatest invention. Instead, he was here, sobbing like a little bitch. Blood, pooling from the wounds in his upper arms thanks to the instrument, slid nastily down his arm and onto the ground, onto the instrument itself.

* * *

 

It had been a full week since the last incident. Jean Descole was quiet now. He made no attempts to hurt the workers. He made no attempts to even feel slightly ashamed when he pissed himself. He ate the gruel he was given with quiet resignation. Worst of all, he made no attempts at even wishing for Raymond. 

He was on his last leg, nearly broken but not quite. He would never give fully into Targent, let alone Bronev. He hated the man, he hated the agency, and he'd rather die than work for him. 

Descole did not move when the door opened and the familiar face popped up in the darkness again. He didn't even look up, not even when Bronev insulted him, not even when Bronev laughed in his face. He whimpered when Bronev tugged on the broken arm, dried blood flaking off. But he did not look up. He did

He looked up only when the mask, his safe haven, was plucked from his face. Bronev laughed at the identity. “So it's you. How pathetic.” Descole's eyes widened. “Look what you've become, you piece of,” Bronev snapped the mask in two, down the middle cleanly, “shit. Pathetic bastard. I can't even pity you.” 

The prisoner hung his head, tears welling up in his eyes again. He wanted to scream, but he didn't: He could not find the voice to. He wanted Bronev to leave him alone. He wanted to die in peace – 

He screamed now if only for the fact a blade had been forced into the broken upper arm, twisted twice, and let there as if it belonged. He screamed loud, and he attempted to get away from the pain, but nothing came to his aid. He could not hear the commander's laughter over his own sobs and cries. 

When he calmed down, searing pain no longer searing, Descole noted that Bronev was gone. On top of the vice, below him, lay the pieces of his mask, of his identity.

* * *

 

He had begun to hallucinate. His vision was fuzzy, double, and altogether poor. His eyes were no doubt blood shot, an arteriole broken and blood pooling against the sclera. He was partially blind, and he was choking to death, and he wanted to die, but they made sure he didn't. He dared not move, for the knife was still stuck in his arm, and every time he did move, pain was sure to follow; he was surprised he did not pass out yet. 

Every half an hour, a worker would come in to make sure he hadn't killed himself. Bronev was very thorough with keeping this “pathetic weakling” alive in order to torture him more. 

Visions of a happier life danced before him. Visions of his childhood, of his teenaged years, of the time in Misthallery, in Ambrosia, in Monte d'Or. He could still taste the sand and dust in his mouth when he was captured by the lackeys; Raymond had been shot down there, and left for the buzzards. 

He began crying then, shutting his eyes. The pain shot up through his arm and down his back. He wasn't sure how long he had actually been in this position, but his legs were cramping and his alright arm felt like it had popped out of the socket. Targent really knew how to torture someone. 

Bronev chose that moment to walk in, snickering at the tears and sobs. “Idiot,” he commented. He reached up, cutting both ties that suspended his prisoner. Descole fell like a deadweight to the ground, smacking his head off the stone rather hard. He curled in on himself, broken arm trailing behind him like it was a foreign part of him. 

“Ha, you really are miserable, aren't you? A miserable sack of good-for-nothing shit.” He pressed his shoe to Descole's back, shoving him hard; once on his side, Bronev stuck another knife into him – this time, his thigh was victim. 

Descole cried out. His ears rung loudly, and he truthfully couldn't hear anything that Bronev had been saying. His forehead was bleeding, mixing with the auburn hair and matting it. The commander stuck another knife into his side. And left. 

Descole wanted to die. 

* * *

 

He had passed out after that last attack. The pain was finally too much for him, and he succumbed to it. As he lost consciousness, he thought, fleetingly, that he was actually dying. He was a fool. He was a big fool to think that the world would be so merciful to him after all he had done. All of the karma in his life was catching up and rearing its ugly head. 

“I'm going to die here,” he murmured aimlessly, face pressed against the stone. It was cold, and it smelled of urine and blood, but he didn't dare move again. He didn't have the strength to. 

His back turned to the door, he didn't see who entered this time. Every time it had opened from now on, he had tensed, causing himself more pain with the blades, but he was terrified of it being Bronev. Normally, it wasn't – this time, however, it was. 

Bronev, wearing gloves, moved Descole around until he was sitting up against the wall. He had cut most of the bounds and ropes; the only ones that remained were the ones around his neck, the ones around his middle, and the ones around his thighs. His arm, indeed, had popped its socket, and he was in no position to escape. 

“You're a dog, Descole. Will you become loyal?” 

Red eyes blinked slowly at the commander, then turned their gaze away. Bronev barked a laugh, forcing him to look at him once more. 

“Will you submit yourself to Targent, you mutt?” he asked once more, digging his heel into Descole's untouched thigh. “Will you die here, or do you want out? Do you want to live, you fucker? I can grant you life, if only you submit yourself to me,” he went on. 

Fat tears flowed from Descole's eyes. He would rather die than become part of Targent, the agency which he so despised. Bronev clicked his tongue, shaking his head. 

“This won't do, Descole.” 

A hard boot connected with the Frenchman's gut, and he doubled over nearly instantaneously. Vomit – if it could be called that, with all the liquidized shit they had been given him – spewed from his mouth, onto the ground and onto himself. He cried harder, choking on the gastric acids. Bronev delicately sat him up again, kicked him again, and watched as Descole sobbed and vomited again. A pleasant crack of a rib or two was heard, music to Bronev's ears. 

“Will you join?” 

He stood hard on Descole's shin, breaking one of the bones after a good stomp or two. The stench of vomit – one aroma Bronev was all too familiar with – filled the room, blood and tears and sweat following and mingling. Descole hunched over, throwing up again – nothing was coming up now, just acid, just the burning sensation with no release. 

“Descole,” Bronev sang. “Descole, Descole. Won't you join?” He shoved the man over again, like how he had been when Bronev had first entered the room, and onto his stomach. He crouched, grabbed hard onto Descole's blood-matted hair, and slammed his face into the floor. Jean nearly choked on the amount of blood that filled his mouth in an instant, nose broken, jaw cracked. He spit out some of the crimson liquid, iron mixing with the acid. 

Descole cried hard; Bronev tugged hard on the hair. Descole whimpered; Bronev chuckled. 

Whatever last bit of pride he had, it broke. Descole muttered a soft approval of membership. 

Bronev's eyes lit up, and he smashed Descole's face into the ground again. “Wonderful. I'll have Bloom make the arrangements. I'll see you later.”

Descole was left alone. With his good arm, he pushed himself up to a sitting position. He couldn't feel anything in his body, all was numb, and his ego was gone. Vomit and blood mixed on his face, and one of his eyes swelled shut. Tilting his head back, he sobbed pitifully. 

Jean Descole was no longer Jean Descole.


End file.
